Farewell to 2020: Another Ode to Desmos and the #mtbos

 I tried to blog every month this year, but remote learning and grad school classes kept me from it. How fitting is it for this school year that I waited until the absolute last day of the year to write my final blog post??

We can all agree this was a weird year. There were days where my anxiety levels reached the highest points they ever have. I think I have officially had every physical symptom of anxiety that exists this year. But I know that overall, I had it pretty good in 2020. My family and I stayed healthy, we found ways to stay connected, and I was able to spend lots of time with my husband and dog. I also learned a lot about my biases and my privilege this year, and I'm thankful for the ways I was challenged to work on these. 

When I think back on this year, I can't imagine how much different it would have been without twitter. I love how teachers came together to support each other this year. And without the many teachers I have the chance to collaborate with, I can guarantee that my anxiety about this new form of teaching and all the difficult things about this year would have been much less tolerable. So, thank you to my #mtbos family. Many people don't understand that you can find such a real community of people on twitter, but we know it's true!

So to wrap up 2020, I wanted to share my successes this year. And for me, success was definitely measured differently this year (maybe it was for you, too). But overall, I'm incredibly thankful for the work the Desmos team did this year to help my students find success and for me to feel success as well.

The thing I have always appreciated about the desmos team is that they are in it for all of us, teachers and students. They listen to teachers and support their needs. But their end game is really for the kids. If they don't think something will benefit the students' learning, they ask us to pause and reconsider. One of my favorite posts from this year came from Dan Meyer. He asked us to reconsider how we are giving students feedback. And I'll admit, during this pandemic there were several times that I felt I needed to do what was easiest for me, even if it wasn't the best thing for the students (because our mental health matters too). But I appreciate that he pointed out the issues with always using "self-checking" CL, and gave us some other options to consider. Good coaches don't just say "don't do this", they help brainstorm ways to do it better, and that's exactly what Dan did. 

When creating assessments on Desmos this year, I kept Dan's words in mind. And let's be honest, I tried to make sure I was giving assessments that students couldn't easily cheat on. And while I appreciate many aspects of the self-checking CL, and I do use them sometimes, I found that my assessments were not the best time for that. I appreciate that remote learning forced me to think outside the box about how I ask questions of students. It forced me to come up with ways they could show their thinking in words or verbally. And while I know these assessments were not the best I could have given, this shift was an important one for me. I witnessed AMAZING thinking this year. I also had some students struggle to respond to my assessment questions, but that helped me learn how to improve for next semester. But the best thing about these assessments on desmos (besides never having to bring physical papers home to grade!) was that I could easily provide feedback to students on the screen. And by combining the feedback with the rubric we created in google classroom, students had several places to see what they did incorrectly and learn from it. I will definitely be continuing to use these, even when we go back to a hybrid model in February.

I have spent this year looking forward to things next year (seeing friends and family, A VACCINE, sharing meals, seeing my students' faces, finally implementing more parts of the #thinkingclassroom framework). But I am also thankful for the time to slow down, bake my sourdough bread, read books, sleep, spend time with my husband and dog, and exercise more. I am excited to use the things I've learned this year to keep working towards a math revolution!

(And speaking of math revolutions, I cannot recommend Peter Liljedahl's book on Thinking Classrooms enough. Laura Wheeler (@wheeler_laura) also leads a book club on twitter on Monday nights, and I have learned so much!)